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Noooooo, the gals assured me, but dammit, I felt freaky. I felt like I could feel all the stuff that had been injected into my face {with neeeeeeeedles!}, I could feel it, like it was going to start morphing underneath my skin, distorting my face, my face! There had been nothing wrong with my face! And now, what had I done, there was stuff in there, what was it going to do, would my friends even recognise me?!?

Always had way too much imagination. And a penchant for la dramz.

There’s a certain amount of mirror-gazing that goes on in this line of work, but it’s almost always a sort of work-a-day, detached appraisal. Not so the minute I got into the taxi. God bless the driver, he got a very muffled howaya and then his fare immediately retreated behind her iPhone, and stared, angled, put the phone away… took it out, stared, angled… ugh.

I had stuff to do when I got home, and none of it had to do with keeping an eye on what my face was doing. I could feel stuff, stuff in my face, but even that became figments of said imagination. The local anaesthetic was wearing off, which was a relief, sort of, because I felt dopey all over, not just around my mouth; it was also not a relief, because now the area was feeling a little sore. Oh, crap, off I go again, to look in a reflective surface… or in Photo Booth, and I look at my mouth, not even my whole face, and then compare it to old photos that are in the Booth, and God Almighty, I have gone completely insane.

***

I was expecting a gang-bang, to be honest: a bunch of beauty journalistas and the director of the Venus Medical Centre, some charts, a graph or two. I had been asked ahead of time, did I want to avail of the filler myself, or see it demonstrated on a model? Well, I am all about the trying and the testing, so let’s do it on me, okay? Which surprised me, because I am not an advocate of interventions of this sort, not consciously. Apparently. Because once I pointed to the gully between my brows, it was all over. How could I not give this a go? How could I not at least see what it looked like?

My palms blossomed with sweat, but I said nothing, didn’t say, ‘Hmm’ or ‘What?’ or ‘Maybe I need to think this over,’ because clearly I did not need to think about it at all. For all my self-esteem affirmations, given the chance to ‘fix’ a thing, a perfectly natural thing that has to do with aging, apparently I just go ‘Okay.’

***

I manage to do the stuff I was supposed to do, mostly, and organise myself for the writing workshop I am co-facilitating on Thursday nights. My lovely colleague laughs at me — not at me, at me, because no, my face looks fine, I’ve got no lines anyway, it doesn’t look freaky. The area is sore, and it hurts to laugh. Will I ever be able to laugh again? The students don’t recoil in horror, and I figure I’ve gotten away with it.

Gotten away with what? That’s something I need to think about.

***

As I sit here writing, something just fell off my face. Something just fell off my face! I shove the chair backwards, I practically throw myself to floor to look under the desk, something fell off my face, my face fell off — and I discover a piece of cheese from my sandwich. Something that was not my face but was stuck to my face. I laugh — it hurts less — and feel relieved, and gross.